Monthly Archives: August 2008

The latest SJTU rankings for 2008 now published although not “official” it seems until 15 August.

Harvard is again top as in 2007, and Cambridge remains in 4th position and top from the UK. Top 20 as follows:

1 Harvard University
2 Stanford University
3 University of California – Berkeley
4 University of Cambridge
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
6 California Institute of Technology
7 Columbia University
8 Princeton University
9 University of Chicago
10 University of Oxford
11 Yale University
12 Cornell University
13 University of California – Los Angeles
14 University of California – San Diego
15 University of Pennsylvania
16 University of Washington – Seattle
17 Univ Wisconsin – Madison
18 University of California – San Francisco
19 Tokyo University
20 Johns Hopkins University

UK universities appear in the top 100 as follows (change from last year in brackets):

A “poll of polls” as produced by the Times Higher Education. It is a simple average of rankings of the most recent UK league tables published. No claims are made, rightly, for statistical rigour. This would qualify as what Peter Snow in his swingometer days would have described as “just a bit of fun”:

1 Oxford
2 Cambridge
3 London School of Economics
4 Imperial College London
5 Warwick
6 St Andrews
7 University College London
8 Durham
9 York
10 Loughborough

Back in 2003 the Daily Telegraph (in lieu of any other league table effort and without a disclaimer) undertook a very similar exercise. The results were:

So top 5 the same apart from the Oxbridge switch, UCL and York remain but three big Russell Group institutions, Nottingham, Bristol and Manchester, usurped by smaller 94 group universities, St Andrews, Durham and Loughborough.